tr - stettner's ledges
Gregory Hill
TR - Stettner's Ledges + Upper Kiener's
In which our hero finds lots more gear but doesn't
get to keep any of it, nearly gets decapitated,
and gets stranded at the Long's Peak ranger station,
but still manages to have a great day...
4 A.M. Clive and Paul show up at my apartment just as
I am walking out to wait for them. Clive is a regular
partner - I've never met Paul before, he is just giving
us a ride up and is planning to hike the keyhole route
while we climb. Still, the whole thing seems a little
hard to coordinate to me so far as getting back down
at the same time goes, but I acquiesce. On the way up
Paul asks when we'll be back and we guess 5p.m. OK, says
Paul, I'm leaving at 5 if you aren't back. I assume this
is a joke. Clive, who knows this guy, is thinking to
himself he's being a real asshole. The latter turns out
to be correct. Not knowing this, I leave my wallet, keys,
etc. in the car without giving a second thought to it.
5 A.M. The Long's peak ranger station parking lot - literally
crawling with people! We have to park 1/2 mile away even
this early. None of them look like climbers though - everybody
is doing the Keyhole. We race up the trail and it is literally
a train of people. They all seem cheerful and having a good
time so I see nothing wrong with it, but a few of them seem
nettled at us racing because they don't understand the
climbing scene - that we have to hurry because we have so much
to do.
8 A.M. We reach the base of Stettner's Ledges, first put up
in 1927 by Paul and Joe Stettner, sans pitons, with hob-nailed
boots, hemp rope, etc. The overall line is obvious from below,
but it turns out that there is a lot of fuzziness to the exact
line you take (with the exception of the piton ladder on the
crux pitch - the pitons were not put in by the Stettner's btw).
As we work our way up we see no one on the diamond, 3 starting
up Lamb's slide, and 2 atop the first pitch of Stettners. We
have been seeing the two for quite awhile and are worried about
being behind them because they are not moving at all. As we
get there they are descending - so this is a retreat - and we
learn that one of them took a 15' fall and hurt his ankle, but
not so badly that they couldn't walk out. He seemed more shaken
than anything else. They had left 3 stoppers, a locking carabiner,
2 regular carabiners, and some webbing which we promised to
return to them, giving them my phone number.
Out of the two of us, Clive is the mountaineer and I am the
rock climber. Clive has amazing stamina and strength for endless
3rd and 4th class scrambling at altitude, crossing snow and ice,
and invariably is leading the way when we're doing that (multiple
peaks in a day connected by ridges and the like) but his limit for
leading is 5.6 and tends to be very slow even for that - plus he
doesn't seem to be incredibly infatuated with leading but likes
to second - so I'll be leading all the pitches.
The first pitch seems much harder than the grade 5.6 to me. I
get into a finger lock lieback on smooth polished granite that
gives me several pauses to think. This is to be the pattern all
day today. This is what I would call very hard 5.7. We might have
been off-route on the first pitch, but not later. It was hard.
My hat is off to the Stettners. This climb was an amazing feat
in 1927. I have no doubt they would be out in the front ranks
of some aspect of climbing if they were in their prime today.
While setting the first belay, a strange sound impinges itself
upon my subconscious. Before my brain is done belching up
explanatory thoughts from the depths like ''why is that plane
flying so low'' and ''that certainly must be a huge hummingbird''
- the origin is explained by a tremendous shattering smash on
the slabs below, about 100' down the slab (but it could have
been much closer to me at some point of its flight - neither
of us actually saw it before it smashed). The sound we heard
was very strange. The closest thing I can relate it to is those
kids toys where a shaped piece of wood is swung around on a
string. I wasn't afraid until I realized what had made it, because
I had no association with that sound. I didn't know that a large
rock that has free fallen for 1000+ feet does that. Within
10 minutes or so another 3 had fallen, but farther away and
smaller. Later we heard and saw more rockfall from further along
Broadway above us. We had no more rockfall all day. My only
surmise is that the three we say going up Lambslide did it. If
so, I do not believe they shouted. Communication was no problem
for us all day, and we could even hear the shouted commands from
climbers off on the diamond, which was further away than they
would have been on Broadway. Inexcusable if true.
The crux pitch was magnificent and very difficult. All I can
say is that a typical 5.7 in Eldorado, Lumpy, etc. and this 5.7
are two very very different things. I was quite nervous for
awhile, run-out above my last piece, staring at a 50-60 year old
mangled piton offered me as a consolation, trying to stay poised
on polished holds. I'm not trying to say this climb is incredibly
difficult - it isn't - but the rock all along here has a peculiar
slippery polish, and many sections with no positive holds at all,
even if not that steep. The crux pitch has perhaps 120' of
sustained climbing of this nature. It is also very cool because
although there are tons of pitons, they are hard to see coming
up and the line doesn't isn't the completely straightforward one.
More than once it switches to another crack/dihedral system across a
blind face/bulge. Each time I made one of these moves it was because
going straight up the straightforward line seemed much harder
than the blind move. Then I'd make the move and see one of the
ancient pitons there telling me I'd replicated the original choice
of the first ascentionists. What can I say, it was a fantastic
pitch.
Up above we got into some difficulties with time. Clive didn't
want to do the 5.8 direct finish because he felt too tired out
from the crux pitch, so we planned to do the original finish
out left on a 5.5 traverse to broadway. The trouble was threefold
1) much longer than expected; 2) easy to climb into a dead-end
and realize we were supposed to be 30' lower, but no easy way
down; 3) lots of rope drag. So this section went on and on and
it was 1 P.M. by the time we got to Broadway.
Now we had traversed far left of upper Kiener's (another reason
to do the 5.8 is it takes you closer to U.K.) so we had to
spend more time getting over on Broadway. The weather seemed
fairly stable though so truthfully we were both enjoying
ourselves and relaxing somewhat. Although it was now obvious
we'd be far behind schedule (and our ride home probably long
gone), we were enjoying the easier mountaineering style
scrambling across Broadway, the views, the whole scene. Amazingly
there were only 2 parties on the diamond all day - and no one
anyplace else besides the ones I've already mentioned. No one on
the casual route! (1 on pervertical and 1 on obelisk i think)
I was drooling all day and wishing I could be ready and up there
on a day like this - but not sorry to be doing what I was doing
instead either.
We had an uneventful and enjoyable ascent and summited around
6 p.m. We got snowed on a little and there were clouds and
thunder off on the plains and even some of the surrounding
peaks, but Longs stayed basically clear all day.
We descended the cables route, and got back to the car around
9, our ride long gone as we expected. We had been reported as
late along with 2 other parties. We had passed one of the other
ones on the way down - an elderly man and his son. I estimated
they wouldn't be down until 1 or 2 a.m. the rate they were
going. The 72 year old man's wife was anxiously waiting at
the trailhead, saying if she had any say it would be his last
Long's Peak hike (evidently it's been a yearly tradition that
he refuses to give up). I hope that turned out o.k..
While we were waiting for Clive's wife to drive up from Boulder
to pick us up (about an hour), a young couple came up - they
were checking out the trailhead in preparation for a keyhole
hike the next day! They asked us questions like if 4 a.m. was
early enough to start. She'd heard that you ''had to be out
of there (the summit) by noon'', to which I replied ''well,
we summited at 6p.m....''. There were guffaws of laughter all
around ''oh, you guys break ALL the rules'' she bemoaned
(humourously).
Fortunately Paul had left my things off at Clive's so I got
into my apartment ok. Clive and Julie both spoke of Paul as
their ''ex-friend'' on the way down.
--
| O___| | |
| Montani /\ \_ | Sentiment without action |
| Semper \ \/\_\ | is ruination of the soul. |
| Liberi U \_ | | - Edward Abbey |
rockdog
A couple of corrections about the Stettner brothers first ascent:
They DID use pitons. Probably the first time they were used on Longs.
Also, they changed from hob-nailed boots to "felt-soled climbing shoes"
on the rock.
Reference: "Roof of the Rockies" by William M. Bueler, pg 115.
Gregory Hill
The guidebook I used, by Scott Kimball, unambiguously states that
they didn't use pitons -- so this appears to be a case of conflicting
references. I admit I was just guessing about the hob-nailed boots.
--
| O___| | |
| Montani /\ \_ | |
| Semper \ \/\_\ | |
| Liberi U \_ | | |
Douglas Theobald
One of the most recent issues of Climbing mag has an article on the
Stettner's to Keiner's route, written by Dougald Macdonald. It states
that one of the Stettner brothers actually took a fall on a pin he
placed at the crux, only to free it on his second try. Pretty ballsy
for hemp ropes.
Doug
George Bell
In article <4ut0hl$i...@csnews.cs.colorado.edu>, gh...@bigtime.cs.colorado.edu (Gregory Hill) writes:
> In article <Dw4w8...@indra.com>, rockdog <roc...@indra.com> wrote:
> >A couple of corrections about the Stettner brothers first ascent:
> >
> >They DID use pitons. Probably the first time they were used on Longs.
> >Also, they changed from hob-nailed boots to "felt-soled climbing shoes"
> >on the rock.
> >
> >Reference: "Roof of the Rockies" by William M. Bueler, pg 115.
>
> The guidebook I used, by Scott Kimball, unambiguously states that
> they didn't use pitons -- so this appears to be a case of conflicting
> references.
I would guess the resolution lies in the fact that modern chrome-moly
pitons invented by Chouinard are quite different from the soft iron pitons
invented and used in Europe. In 1927, the Stettner brothers would have
had access only to soft iron pitons. These work poorly in hard
granite cracks and are so different from modern pitons Kimball probably
means the ascent was done without (chrome-moly) pitons.
-George
rockdog
>>
>> The guidebook I used, by Scott Kimball, unambiguously states that
>> they didn't use pitons -- so this appears to be a case of conflicting
>> references.
Yeah. I would put more credit in a history book that quotes directly from
Joe Stettner, who mentions the piton use in his notes about the climb. Sorry.
In article <4utm0f$c...@news.advtech.uswest.com>, be...@uswest.com (George Bell) says:
>
>I would guess the resolution lies in the fact that modern chrome-moly
>pitons invented by Chouinard are quite different from the soft iron pitons
>invented and used in Europe. In 1927, the Stettner brothers would have
>had access only to soft iron pitons. These work poorly in hard
>granite cracks and are so different from modern pitons Kimball probably
>means the ascent was done without (chrome-moly) pitons.
True. However, the Stettners (Paul leading pretty much the entire route)
did use several of the pitons for protection and belay anchors, which were
tested when Joe fell on one of the harder moves.
Steelmnkey
rockdog <roc...@indra.com> wrote:
>They DID use pitons. Probably the first time they were used on Longs.
>Also, they changed from hob-nailed boots to "felt-soled climbing shoes"
>on the rock.
>
>Reference: "Roof of the Rockies" by William M. Bueler, pg 115.
gh...@bigtime.cs.colorado.edu (Gregory Hill)
--The guidebook I used, by Scott Kimball, unambiguously states that
--they didn't use pitons -- so this appears to be a case of conflicting
---references. I admit I was just guessing about the hob-nailed boots.
Climb! (the climbing history of Colorado book...) says:
"The Stettners had a small number of pitons and caribiners
with them (the first time carainers had been used in Colorado.
...blah...etc...Part way up the climb, they arrived at a flat-floored
alcove. The rear wall of the alcove proved vertical, but Paul was
able to climb it using an occasional piton for protection. In subsequent
years, this section has become known asthe 'piton ladder.' "
G.
"Vy can't ve chust climb?" - John Salathe